JLM Morton

Juliette was the very first poet I photographed as part of my series of portraits of Gloucestershire poets.

Juliette explains on her website https://www.jlmmorton.com; "I’m a writer, poet, editor, celebrant and teacher based near Stroud in Gloucestershire, England. My work explores contemporary rural experience and belonging, ancestry, place and practices of care, repair and solidarity across human and more-than-human worlds."

Juliette chose to be photographed around the Stroudwater canal. The industrial heritage of this area fascinates me. I have previously produced a series of photographs around the canal.

Juliette has kindly shared a favourite poem;

Whiteway 

The land is dreaming again,

white as a thin shelled egg,

cloud shoulder, quickthorn, stone axe.

Ancient woman with cargo of salt.

Not bleached or alabaster, not

ivory or ashen, pearly, pure or ice.

But white as mycelium strands

digging at limestone

to make a road on the ridge.

The land says listen and merge,

like ammonite held in oolite.

How rock wants a wet body to make fossil.

Such are the things we’ve forgotten,

adrift from the otherworld

of mole, cave, worm.

Whiteway’s memories of kin’d —

a sinuous line that pulls us back, dwells

in our unions and uncertainties.

To be with the season,

dream the road, says the land.

Walk us back to ourselves.

This poem first appeared in Modron Magazine (July 2024). It was a winner of the Poetry Archive Now Worldview 2024 competition.